The pain of a breakup is absolutely normal. In fact, it’s beyond normal. It’s a guaranteed experience within any great life. Maybe you read my article on dating but it’s worth mentioning again a point I made there: “Don’t be afraid of feeling crushed. Be afraid of living a life where your heart was never once broken. To live outside heartbreak is to live a pale existence, is to numb out. That’s nothing to glorify. So, if your heart is at stake, press on in full pursuit. Let that be enough to make you proud and brave at heart…”

I believe with absolute certainty that love, both lost and current, is something to be celebrated every day. You loved, you gave love, you felt, you inspired someone else to feel. Do you know how important that is?

As you probably notice happening quite often, more and more people struggle to let people in, let alone let love into their lives. People are starved for love (look at how many dating apps there are, and how very little stigma there is attached to them!) and have more opportunities to meet someone today than ever before yet there’s this deep frustration and sadness surrounding the results of dating. And that’s not because the dating culture is impossible, it’s because the people within it have fallen out of touch with themselves.

What I mean is people starve for love yet make it impossible to actually let love into their lives. They put up walls and create rules and they disappear on each other. The fact that you’re not immune to the tender phases of grievance because you have had a relationship, and one deep enough that you are experiencing pain in the wake of it, tells me you are not one of these impossible people.

It tells me you are more rare than others and, believe it or not, are ahead of others too (even if you are single now!) because you know how to love and, better still, you know you can love greatly. Live through that confidence. Don’t minimize it, okay?

I believe our heart breaks in mysterious ways, ways that can be forceful, that may go against what we ourselves want — and that, this sometimes needs to happen, sometimes our breakups need to be outside our control in order to bring us closer to the next love we are meant for.

Years ago I was told that sometimes the world does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. I’ve never forgotten that. It kind of blew my mind wide open, and put my heartache to rest too. Maybe it can comfort you as well.

So much of recovering from a breakup has to do with mindset and perspective. I know how difficult and impossible it can feel to even fathom changing your thoughts and thinking in more empowered ways in the midst of such doubt and heartbreak but, believe me, better thinking is essential for a greater life and it’s also the gateway to greater love. Chin up, alright?

And hey, don’t forget, that while your ex may have ended things that doesn’t effect your capacity to give love… today, tomorrow, or sometime in the near, near future.